


Arrayed Like One of These

by fireflysglow_archivist



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-30
Updated: 2005-05-30
Packaged: 2019-04-29 06:38:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14467107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflysglow_archivist/pseuds/fireflysglow_archivist
Summary: That bizarre shirt Simon's wearing in the "Serenity" trailer absolutely required an explanation.





	Arrayed Like One of These

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** Contains major spoilers for "Serenity" the movie.

  
Author's notes: Contains major spoilers for "Serenity" the movie.  


* * *

Arrayed Like One of These

## Arrayed Like One of These

(Translation: _bin bin yu li_ \- refined, urbane) 

Illustration here: http://photos12.flickr.com/16294861_0d2dcda89e.jpg?v=0 

* * *

"Riddled with holes." 

River pulled Simon's last pair of sweats from the dryer and held them up. They were the ones he liked to sleep in. Not fit for much else. The light from overhead shone out the bullet hole in the leg, like a laser beam filled with dancing motes. 

"Only the one," Kaylee said. "That ain't so bad. We all got bullet-holes, pretty much. Wanna try sewin' it up?" 

"It would leave a scar," River pointed out. Kaylee had mended the bullet hole in her own coveralls, not as neatly as Simon had stitched up the one in her belly. "Bloodstains are even more problematic." 

"Yeah." Kaylee sighed. "They don't come out easy, that's for certain. Seems like all of Simon's nice things've just got spoiled from dirt and grime, and him gettin' hit, and bleedin', and us bleedin' on him... Well, this ain't no kinda life for fancy clothes." 

He'll be half naked soon, River thought. She saw Kaylee blushing and realized that she might have spoken out loud. Kaylee wanted him--wanted her _bin bin yu li_ brother to polish her and make her shine. 

River thought about Shepherd Book and his pages of symbolism. "He's not a lily of the field." 

"What--Simon? No, of course he ain't!" 

"He toils. He needs raiment," she explained. The image that came made her laugh a little: Simon naked, in a meadow, not toiling at all. She had never known him not to toil. He always had a purpose. She didn't think he would last a day out here without her, and that was a worry. 

"Raiment? You mean clothes?" Kaylee giggled, her color still high. "Sure he does, same as the rest of us." 

River knew that Kaylee didn't see the pictures in her head--that Kaylee was merely imagining Simon without his clothes, a simple image, not meaning anything other than what it appeared to mean. Kaylee's longing to see him in his skin was like the taste of peaches. 

"When they see you, it's time to go," River cautioned, but Kaylee didn't seem to hear her. Words were too slow, and the metaphors were lost on the people around her. 

And yet, following thoughts of her own, Kaylee arrived at the same place. "I know!" she said suddenly. "Let's make him a new shirt!" She reached into the dryer and shook out the white surgical gown, the one they'd stolen on Ariel. The one Simon had been wearing when he had looked into River's brain at last. "Maybe we could use this as a pattern." 

River hated that gown--it was what they'd all worn, standing behind their machines and stripping her layers away. But she knew what it meant to Simon. Knew it made him feel real. It was his doctor disguise. That's why he'd kept it. 

River nodded, smiling. "We'll array him as Solomon!" 

"Uh, sure. Okay. That...that sounds real good." 

"We'll need Inara's help," River pointed out. That much was obvious. 

"She's gone, sweetie. She went back to her training house a coupla months ago, remember?" 

River remembered perfectly. Tried to have patience and not roll her eyes, because Kaylee was her friend. "She left things. Let's go see!" 

"What? No she didn't! She cleaned out her shuttle real good." 

"Come with me." River took Kaylee's hand and tugged. The things Inara had left were in a hidey-hole in the cargo bay. When they pulled the grating off and looked inside, the treasure chest River remembered had shrunk to a small plastic crate. 

"'Nara left these? Are you sure?" 

"She didn't want them anymore." River had found them in the reclamation bin. "See? Lots of cloth!" They were blue, a set of fine cotton sheets with a braid along one edge, ornate and costly. When she unfolded them and shook them out, the smell of incense wafted into the cargo bay. 

River felt the fragrance stir memories. "Don't be sad, Kaylee. She'll be back." 

"That'd make the cap'n real happy." 

River suspected otherwise. She gathered the sheet to her face and breathed in, elegance and sorrow and restraint, layers of ceremony and silk, and beneath it all, the Inara nobody knew. She looked up at Kaylee and smiled. "Come on. We have armor to build." 

* * *

The sheet was spread out on the dining table, lines chalked onto it, and they had to hurry to cut out the pieces and clear the table before Simon got back from his trip off-ship with Mal and Zoe. 

It had taken them hours and hours to get this far. Laundering was first. Finding scissors had been the next challenge. Measuring had posed difficulties. Now they were debating over the best approach to making a sleeve fit onto a body. 

"It's hard to tell without taking this apart," Kaylee complained, eyeing the surgical gown. She picked up the scissors and River panicked, the way she knew she shouldn't. 

"No!" she said, too loudly, too passionately. "We can't do that. Simon will disappear!" 

"Okay. It's okay." Kaylee set the scissors down, startled. "It's okay. I won't cut it up. I promise." 

River relaxed. 

"I never did do much sewing. Did you? I don't expect you had to, growin' up the way you did." She was just soothing herself with words, River knew. "My mama made some dresses for me back home, showed me how, but I never did take to it myself. This is nothin' like putting an engine together." Kaylee began to giggle. "You know, I think Simon's the only one of us knows how to sew." 

River imagined her brother sitting tailor-fashion on the floor, a needle and thread in one hand, and herself draped across his knees, limp and torn at the seams. She laughed too. "He can fix the soft things," she said. "You can fix the hard ones." 

They looked at each other and collapsed, giggling, into chairs. 

When their laughter subsided, River stood and smoothed out the beautiful cloth, blue like Simon's eyes, like the sky above Jiangyin, where cows became cows and everyone danced. _No touching guns_. But this was only a pair of scissors. 

"I can see it all," she told Kaylee. "Trust me." And she cut into the sheet. 

* * *

"I wish Inara was here. She'd know what to do!" They were in Kaylee's room. Kaylee held up the sleeve she'd been stitching. 

River could envision it all so clearly, a neck and armholes and shoulders, front, back, sleeves to the wrists. But the cloth wouldn't cooperate. Things looked a little uneven, not as smooth as she'd imagined. "The lack of buttons is worrisome." 

"We coulda bought some back on Greenleaf." 

"Coulda shoulda woulda." River liked it when Jayne said that--liked having the chance to say it herself. It was a simple way to speak of regret. "But buttonholes, we don't understand at all. We'll make it overlap instead. No buttons to undo. Double the plating in front of his heart. You'll see." 

Kaylee shrugged. "Okay. If you say so." She picked up the strip of braid they'd carefully rescued from the edge of Inara's bed linens. "This is pretty, ain't it? When I went to that ball on Persephone, I saw some rich men in coats decorated with stuff like this. It was so glamorous! Simon must've had fancy clothes like that back on Osiris." 

"He was a lily," River agreed. 

Kaylee put the sleeve down and glared at her. "I thought you said he ain't a lily! He ain't any kind of flower. He's a man. A strong one. Smart and brave, and...all _shuai_..." She trailed off, and River could feel what Kaylee was feeling, the gathering of energy pulsing around her heart, and down between her legs. 

To break it up before it gathered further, River rose and pulled the shell of the shirt on over her dress and sweater. "It fits," she said, comparing it to the way Simon's arms around her felt. 

Kaylee looked up and smiled. "It don't look half bad! Turn around--here--" she stood and smoothed the fabric across River's back. "Not bad at all. Now all we gotta do is stick these sleeves on and hem up the edges." 

River turned back, smiling. "He'll like it. It'll make him feel safe." 

* * *

When dinner was over, River gave a signal to Kaylee, who brought out the present and put it in front of Simon. 

"Happy birthday, Simon," River said. 

"Um...it's not my birthday." 

"You have to pretend it is. Kaylee and I made you something." 

Simon looked so startled and pleased that it almost hurt. River remembered everything he'd done for her, all the clothes he'd sacrificed, garment by garment, in their flight across the system. She had forgotten his real birthday, and thrown up on his bed, and stolen his life. That he was pleased with a present wrapped in brown paper might have broken her heart, but she was no longer sure she had one. 

Kaylee patted his arm and smiled at him. "We been workin' on it for days. I hope you like it." 

"I _knew_ them two was up to somethin'!" Jayne said to Mal. River liked his words. She repeated them to herself, wanting things to be as simple as they were for Jayne, all squared away after the fact. Somewhere, deep inside, were some words that would make that happen, but she hadn't heard them yet. 

As the others looked on, Simon opened the package. Kaylee was as nervous as if Simon were unwrapping _her_. River could feel it without even looking at her, fidgeting and fussing with her hair. 

There was a stab of something, somewhere in the room, as the blue spilled out into the dim light of the dinner table. River looked around covertly. It was the captain, staring at Simon's present, and she understood. Understood that he recognized the cloth--had seen it once before, sheets spread beneath Inara's perfect skin, bunching, disheveled, flung back in passion. 

Now Mal was realizing that she had discarded them afterwards. 

Leaving had been required of Inara. If they see you, it's time to go. No one else comprehended that simple fact. "Not shame," she said, trying to reassure him. "It wasn't shame." But Mal just looked away. 

Simon held up his new body armor, his new space suit. "You two made this? For me?" He was smiling, oblivious to the other layers all around him in the room. It looked beautiful in the low light. 

"Uh-huh," Kaylee answered cautiously. "Me 'n' River." 

Simon saw it as a gift of love. "It's not what you think," River warned him, but he just turned his happy face toward her and said, "I think it's a very nice gift." 

"Do ya like it?" Kaylee's anxiety was beginning to melt. "We didn't have any buttons, and you don't wanna look too close at the stitching--we ain't surgeons like you. But we thought the color would look nice on you." 

"It's--it's just--well, it's wonderful. Thank you both, very much." He reached an arm around Kaylee and kissed her cheek. He clasped River's hand, too, and she felt him let go of his fine white shirts, their perfect fit and smooth seams and gold cufflinks. Lost, regretted, mourned, all slipping from his grasp for good as he accepted the covering she and Kaylee had engineered for him from the scraps of other people's lives. 

"Coulda shoulda woulda," she murmured. "I'm glad we didn't rip up your doctor costume." 

Simon just smiled some more, a little puzzled. 

"That's real nice," Wash said. "Can I have a new shirt, too?" 

Zoe looked at him briefly, smiling. "You have a dozen shirts, husband." 

There were no bullet holes in any of _his_ clothes, and yet River could see his bright shirt, horribly rent, bloody beyond salvaging, and Zoe in their darkened quarters, her tears spilling silently onto the rest of Wash's shirts, bunched in her strong hands. 

River bit her lip to keep from speaking, but some words slipped out anyway. "It's so hard to know." 

"Real hard!" Kaylee agreed, her bright words vanquishing the image. River was thankful for her complete misunderstanding. "Fixin' the engine's a lot easier than makin' that shirt was!" 

River nodded. "We toiled." 

"You surely did." The captain was done being uncomfortable. He had already bandaged up that little wound. "I didn't notice a lot of other work gettin' done around here while you two played at seamstressing." 

Kaylee was embarrassed. 

"We did laundry," River stated in Kaylee's defense. _And you'll make_ me _useful soon enough_ , she thought, knowing what had been in Mal's mind ever since Christmas. Ever since Simon had received his own bullet-hole. Mal used the tools that came to hand, even defective ones like her. Unsentimental. She didn't mind being given a use. It was more than Simon could do for her now. 

Simon squeezed her hand warmly. He had no inkling of what the captain intended. "Well, I appreciate it. Very much." He seemed uncertain how best to distribute his smile between her and Kaylee, and finally just looked down at his new shirt. It was a very silly shirt. River knew it, and she knew that Kaylee suspected it too. Simon was trying hard not to think it, resigning himself to wearing it, at least a time or two. 

As River pulled her hand gently out of his grasp, she saw that his arm was still resting on the back of Kaylee's chair. Kaylee leaned into him, and all the thoughts in her head were of how Simon wasn't a lily, but a man, and about taking that shirt off him one evening very soon--the shirt and everything else--and proving it to herself. 

Mal was itching to leave the table, but he was burying the itch under a patient half-smile as his people enjoyed a moment's pleasantness. Jayne was drinking a mug of beer and thinking about sex and sleep. For the first time, River saw how much everyone needed their clothes just so they could sit down and eat together without flying apart. Without weeping for the chairs that were empty now, and the ones that would be empty soon. 

"We can't be naked," she said, remembering how it felt to walk in space. "We wouldn't last a day."

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title:   **Arrayed Like One of These**   
Author:   **Dark Emerald**   
Details:   **Standalone**  |  **G**  |  **gen**  |  **13k**  |  **05/30/05**   
Characters:  Kaylee, Simon, River   
Summary:  That bizarre shirt Simon's wearing in the "Serenity" trailer absolutely required an explanation.   
Notes:  Contains major spoilers for "Serenity" the movie.   
  



End file.
